Popularity of custom motorcycles surges after being featured on TV

Eric Leake

Friday, April 22, 2005 | 9:54 a.m.

LAUGHLIN -- Joe Martin's custom motorcycles have two wheels and an engine but are at least as much art as they are bike.

"I like to think of it as functional art," Martin said.

Martin is a custom bike creator, one of many in the increasingly popular custom business showing bikes at this year's annual Laughlin River Run.

"The Patriot," a bike that Martin created for the Discovery Channel's "World Biker Build-Off" television special, sat outside his trailer like a gallery piece beside some of his other creations.

People recognized the bike and snapped pictures. A sign in front asked people not to sit on it.

But Martin said the bike is completely functional.

"It rides really well. The seat's a little thin, but it's not too bad," he said. "These are my only bikes. When I ride, these are what I ride."

Martin works out of the Martin Bros Bikes garage in Dallas. He sold "The Patriot" for $100,000, he said. Other custom bikes sell for about $50,000 each.

The popularity of custom bikes has grown as they've been featured on television shows including "Monster Garage," "American Chopper," and "Biker Build-Off."

"It's gone totally mainstream. It's appealing to everybody," said Mitch Bergeron of Mitch Bergeron Customs out of Palm Spring, Calif.

Bergeron has also been featured on custom bike shows and is exhibiting bikes at the River Run.

"I consider them mechanical art. But once I'm done making it I'd rather get it out of the shop," he said.

"That's the best part for me -- building. I'm not a biker. I'm a builder."

Bergeron added that builders also need people to appreciate their creations.

Motorcycle enthusiast Sean Moores, 33, from Los Angeles took in the work of custom bike creator Jesse Rooke.

"It's totally innovative," he said of Rooke's bikes, which resemble a old-fashioned Schwinn bicycle.

Moores is an engineer for Boeing and could appreciate the bike's style even as he critiqued some of its finer mechanical points.

Moores has been coming to Laughlin's annual bike rally for about a decade and has noticed the increased attention to custom bikes.

"There are so many TV shows. It's becoming real popular," he said

Andre Carrier, the chairman of the River Run event and president of Golden Nugget in Laughlin, said the custom motorcycle exhibitions and celebrity builders are a new attraction at the annual event.

Rooke said he started building custom bikes only three years ago after he saw the work others did on television.

"I don't know where it came from. My dad used to put baling wire and duct tape on my bikes."

Rooke works out of his Rooke Customs shop in Phoenix. He said the motorcycles tap into a national identity.

"A motorcycle is a certain expression of freedom, sort of outlawish," he said.

It's all about being an individual, and there's nothing more individual than a one-of-a-kind chopper, he said.